


They are us

by serenitysolstice



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: based on a prompt on tumblr, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenitysolstice/pseuds/serenitysolstice
Summary: "There are trees in that park that are older than everyone in the city. You used to go there every day when you were a kid. You’d to talk to those trees about your day, or simply when you had no one to talk to. The kids would stare and tell their mothers about the girl who talked to the trees, calling them gramma, grampa, grandmother, grandfather. You had never once awaited the trees to respond because you were always happy with the swishing of the leaves as their acknowledgment to your words until one day, you hear a voice as you turn to leave the park." ~ writing-prompt-s





	They are us

She’d always loved the trees in her local park. Tall, proud, older than she was, older than her parents, even older than her Nani. Early mornings, on her way to work, she would allow twenty minutes to just stand amongst the trees and  _ listen _ . The sun just barely peeking over the horizon, staining the sky a delicate pink that contrasted beautifully with the bark, with the budding leaves, with the blossoms of the odd fruit tree. The air was cold, but it stung her face in the most amazing way. She imagined that the trees felt the cold as well, that the trees felt. 

 

They whispered secrets to her. Not properly, not actually. She wasn’t mad, she knew that much. Still, she felt, she could learn the secrets of the universe in the whistle of the wind through the bare branches in the midwinter. In the birds calling to each other from their nests, the world’s natural alarm clock. In the way the baby spring leaves protected her as best they could from the rain that was still too cool to be comfortable, the brightness of the soft greens magnified tenfold by the raindrops until she felt like she was standing under a bright green umbrella.

 

Regular dog walkers began to recognize her, to attempt to converse with her. She avoided them where possible, and answered simply and politely where she couldn’t. These few precious minutes were all she really had in the day to feel close to the world around her. Yaz has always had an appreciation for things she could see, and feel, and smell, and hear, and there was nothing quite like feeling the trees talking to each other, and to her, every morning on her way to the station. These were the moments she could truly enjoy being alive. 

 

But it was the evenings that she treasured above all else. There were no dog walkers, no runners and, when she got the good shifts, rarely any school kids around. She could be properly alone with her trees. And it was then that she whispered back. She told them of her day to begin with, feeling foolish at the thought that something as ancient as these trees could seriously care about what she, a nineteen year old police officer, could tell them. So she started deepening the conversation. She told them of her family, of her mother, father and Nani. She told them of her sister, and how she pretended she didn’t care about her, though secretly worried about Sonya. She talked of rough days, casual racism, eavesdropped conversations that shouldn’t have hurt as much as they did. One evening, she talked of a girl she’d met while on patrol. She worked at a coffee shop along her usual route, and Yaz had fallen hard. She talked of nothing else that evening, and she hoped her feelings didn’t seem petty or insignificant to her trees. Maybe two days later, she came back nursing wounded feelings and a bruised heart, and though she barely mentioned it, she had a feeling her trees understood. They felt extra gentle with her. 

 

Most days she couldn’t help but just talk about anything and everything she could think of. Especially when the nights were colder, and the sky clear, and she could see so much of the night sky. It was the only thing that could awe her as much as her trees. If she had the time, and if the part wasn’t too busy, she’d sit with her back against an old oak, one of the tallest of the lot, and gaze up at the stars.    
“I’m going to go there one day.” She said to the oak. “I don’t care how long it takes, and I don’t care what it costs me. One day I’m going to go into space and I’m going to see  _ everything _ . And I promise you, I’ll come back to tell you all about it.” Foolish dreams for a twenty year old police officer, perhaps, but in these quiet moments, surrounded by her friends, she felt like she could entertain the foolish.

 

“Do you do this a lot?” Came a voice with a very northern accent from behind her. Yaz started, banging her head against the oak in the process. 

“What?” She said, standing up, rubbing the back of her head. “Who’s there?”

“Oh, I’m no one.” The woman replied, rounding the tree, hands in her pockets. “I’m just a traveller. Do you often talk to trees?” Yaz flushed, and said nothing. “Not that I think it’s weird or anything. I love talking too, I’ll talk to just about anything that sits still long enough to listen.”    
She held out a hand to Yaz, who shook it slowly, still processing this bizarre woman. “I’m the Doctor.”   
“Doctor-” She prompted for a last name, any name really. 

“No, just that. Just the Doctor.” She grinned.    
“I’m Yasmin. Yaz to my friends.” The Doctor nodded. 

“So, Yaz. Tell me about these trees.” 


End file.
